Pininfarina’s Battista Will be ‘Italy’s Most Powerful and Fastest Car’

By

Jim Motavalli

Dec. 27, 2018 11:07 a.m. ET

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Pininfarina says its Battista, named after the company founder, will be the most powerful and fastest car ever to come out of Italy. Only 150 will be made worldwide.
Pininfarina photo

By

Jim Motavalli

Dec. 27, 2018 11:07 a.m. ET

The venerable and storied Italian design firm Pininfarina—named after founder Battista “Pinin” Farina—brought us the Cisitalia 202 (the first car on display at the Museum of Modern Art In New York), the Nash Healey, the Ferrari 212, the Fiat 124 Spider, the Alfa-Romeo Duetto, and many more.

Now Pininfarina is building cars under its own name, and they’re not only electric but incredibly fast and exclusive. A supercar to rival the performance of Bugatti’s US$3 million, 1,500-horsepower Chiron will be followed by a trio of SUVs.

The Battista hypercar, which will debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March and go on sale in late 2020, takes the founder’s name. So it better be good. It will certainly be memorably fast. The car, to be built in Cambiano, Italy, will have a heady 1,900 horsepower with 1,696 foot pounds of torque, and it will reportedly rocket to 60 miles per hour in less than two seconds. Top speed is an estimated 250 mph, with 300 miles of all-electric range. The combination of fast acceleration, huge speed and range will likely demand a very light car and a very big battery pack.

The Battista will be built in an edition of just 150, with 50 coming to the U.S. Another 50 are reserved for Europe, and the remaining cars are earmarked for Asia and the Middle East. The price is expected to be US$2 million to US$2.5 million. But what price do you put on what Pininfarina calls “Italy’s most powerful and fastest car”?

Battista Farina founded the firm that bears his name in 1930, and began his lengthy collaboration with Ferrari in 1952. He died in 1966, after which point his son, Sergio (who himself died in 2012) took over. The current company chairman is Paulo Pininfarina, the founder’s grandson. The “Pinin” nickname, which means “smallest,” refers to Battista being the 10th of 11 children. He officially changed his last name to “Pininfarina” in 1961.

Work for Italian coachbuilders became harder to find after the 1960s. And Pininfarina got a new lease on life when Indian auto company Mahindra & Mahindra paid US$28 million for a 76% stake in 2015. Mahindra’s investment allowed the Italian firm to scale up its automaking activities, and the electric side of things benefits from Mahindra’s involvement in the Formula E battery car race series. And Pininfarina said back in April that it will concentrate on exclusive battery-powered supercars, with the Battista (code-named PF-Zero) appearing first.

Also involved in the Battista’s electric powertrain is Croatia-based supercar manufacturer Rimac, which recently announced its own C_Two electric hypercar with similar specifications.

Most of the major supercar companies have now announced SUVs, and Pininfarina will follow suit with a full range of them, aimed at competing with the Lamborghini Urus and similar cars. A potential SUV collaborator is the American EV company Rivian, which has shown an electric pickup truck on a skateboard chassis that Pininfarina could use. The first Pininfarina SUVs won’t be seen until 2021.

The high-performance EV field is getting crowded, reflecting the relative ease of designing and building electric powertrains (compared to designing and fabricating gas engines), and the many willing partners with electric technology to sell.

Pininfarina’s Battista Will be ‘Italy’s Most Powerful and Fastest Car’

The venerable and storied Italian design firm Pininfarina—named after founder Battista “Pinin” Farina—brought us the Cisitalia 202 (the first car on display at the Museum of Modern Art In New York), the Nash Healey, the Ferrari 212, the Fiat 124 Spider, the Alfa-Romeo Duetto, and many more.

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